OAKLAND — Activists calling for increased public safety monies for community-based programs serving the formerly incarcerated on Tuesday shut down an Alameda County Board of Supervisors meeting, where Supervisor Keith Carson in response announced a proposal that would double the amount spent on such programs in fiscal year 2015-2016.

The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights deployed a few dozen activists to disrupt the meeting on behalf of the “Jobs Not Jails” campaign, demanding Alameda County spend half its public safety budget on programs that offer services like job training, health care, housing and education to the people re-entering society after jail or prison.

“Sheriff’s jail beds are going down yet his budget continues to go up,” Ella Baker Center Executive Director Zachary Norris told the supervisors. “That is unacceptable. That is lopsided and it doesn’t make any damn sense. Do you indeed support the war on poverty or do you stand in continuation of a war against black and brown people that is centuries long?”

Their songs and chants prompted supervisors to prematurely end the meeting, after which Supervisor Richard Valle signed a pledge to vote to commit approximately 50 percent of the county’s public safety dollars to community-based organizations. Valle said he was signing the pledge in good faith that he would be held to the letter of the group’s demands.

Several of the group’s leaders refused to leave the chambers for more than an hour after the greater group was escorted out by deputies, but no one was arrested.

The board of supervisors did not vote on the sheriff’s budget on Tuesday, nor was the issue on spending AB109 prison realignment money on the agenda. The protest, however, did prompt Carson to announce that he and other supervisors have been working on a proposal to spend an additional $8 million to $10 million of allocated AB109 monies on community-based programs offering re-entry services starting July 1.

Carson said that while the exact numbers still need to be verified by the county auditor, that would bring the total amount being spent on community-based programs serving the re-entry population to $17.5 million or $19.5 million. Carson said that would be “pretty close” to 50 percent of the base amount that Alameda County is allocated under AB109.

Under his proposal, Carson said, the public and community-based groups would have input on how the money is allocated.